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On the Changing Landscape of Friendship
977 Plays7 months ago
Cultivating friendships is deep work. Heart-work! But making friends and maintaining relationships can sometimes be easier said than done, especially in today’s society. The desire and search for meaningful friendships remains foremost in many of our lives. And while we look for those who will leave those lasting footprints in our hearts, it’s also important to consider how we too, by our friendship, impact the hearts of others as well! This week, we're chatting about the changing landscape of friendship, including on how we've changed since recording our first episode on the subject in 2020, how technology and AI may have a bigger impact than we think, what Dunbar's Number adds to the equation and how, in spite of all these things, that perhaps the core of what friendship is may not have changed so much after all.
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 151
00:00:00
Speaker
The number of stable relationships people are cognitively... cognitively? Are cognitively? No. No. Are cognitively? I did it. Oh, you did. Sorry. I ruined it for you. It's okay. I'll be quiet now. I'll start the quote again. Okay. Okay.
00:00:20
Speaker
Quote, the number of stable relationships, people are cognitively abable. Okay. Able. No, I'll just do the whole thing. Oh, Lord help me. Okay.
00:00:43
Speaker
Welcome back to the Modern Lady podcast. You're listening to episode 151. Hi, I'm Michelle. And I'm Lindsay. And today we are talking about friendship again. Former First Lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt once said, quote, many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart. End quote.
00:01:07
Speaker
Especially in today's landscape, the desire and search for meaningful friendships remains foremost in many of our lives. And while we look for those who will leave those lasting footprints on our hearts, it's also important to consider how we too, by our friendship, impact the hearts of others as well. So let's
Supporting the Modern Lady Podcast
00:01:26
Speaker
discuss. But first, the best way that you can support the Modern Lady is by subscribing to our podcast on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts and by sharing us with your friends.
00:01:36
Speaker
We also welcome you to join us over at Patreon, where for just $5 a month, you will get exclusive and extra content. We want to remind our listeners that we have now activated a free trial option on Patreon. So while you can just follow the page for free, if you actually sign up for the free trial, you will have access to all of our extra content for seven days. And then you can decide if you'd like to join us as a paid member. Find us at patreon.com forward slash the modern lady podcast.
00:02:05
Speaker
And if you can't join us on Patreon at this time, a free way to support our show is by leaving it a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It's a chance to tell us what you love about the show and it helps others discover it too.
Listener Shoutout: Elisa from Saskatoon
00:02:20
Speaker
This week's shout out goes to listener Elisa who sent us a message on Instagram and said, I've been loving your podcast from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan for over a year. I genuinely want to be your friends and feel like I already am and receive so much inspiration from your show. Thank you. End quote.
00:02:39
Speaker
Well, thank you, Elisa, for your message and for sharing a favorite podcast of yours that you thought we would enjoy with us too in your message. We're so grateful for your friendship from Saskatoon. We loved hearing from you and appreciate you thinking of us and sending us that new podcast recommendation.
00:02:57
Speaker
And if you would like to leave us a comment or message us about today's episode, the best way to get in touch with us is on Instagram at the Modern Lady podcast. But be sure to stay tuned to the end of the episode for other ways to connect because we would love to hear from you.
00:03:17
Speaker
But before we get into today's chat, Lindsay has our Modern Lady Tip of the Week. Oh, it is beautiful outside today. The sun is warm, the birds are chirping, heralding spring, and many of us are getting outside to enjoy this seasonal delight, just in case it's fall spring as we all are worried about.
Outdoor Adventure and Safety Tips
00:03:38
Speaker
And this has prompted me to look into something.
00:03:41
Speaker
Now, Michelle, Jason and I took our younger kids on a walk through the forest to hunt down this weird man-made lake thingy that we stumbled across accidentally a few years ago. And I know because I saw your Instagram that you were also in the woods with your kids at the same time that you were. So this tip is timely. Okay, so I was on this mission to find this body of water and I was using the map on my phone to find it. And of course, I'm terrible with this. So I led us on a wild goose chase
00:04:07
Speaker
climbing over fallen trees and scratchy branches and we were far away from any footpath. And then all of a sudden those memories came flooding back to me when we were lost in the forest of Vermont, which is, of course, a story for another time. And I reminded myself that we aren't remote, like we're 20 minutes in any direction back to the suburbs. But I thought, I thought as we're sliding down mud and having my boots sucked off in the mud, maybe the Murray's aren't meant to walk in the woods, all the while interspersing. Hey, kids, isn't this adventure fun?
00:04:37
Speaker
Okay, so what's the tip? Well, I looked into this and found an article on the CBC website called, how to prepare properly for a walk in the woods and what to do if you get lost. And here's what I've learned.
00:04:49
Speaker
The first thing they recommend is having a plan. Now this seems obvious, but the two times I have been legit lost in the woods and the other time was with my roommate when we stumbled out of the woods into a darkened cemetery. That is another story for another time, but we didn't have a plan. The two times I legit got lost. We just assumed that you kind of find your way back.
00:05:10
Speaker
So, here's what they recommend. Check the weather, the trail conditions, and map out your route. And here's a very important part. Tell someone where you're going. Ever since Vermont, my parents have sent me photos of every entry point to every path that they're going on if it's somewhere unfamiliar. I keep that photo and then we check in when they're done. And this is a great practice.
00:05:33
Speaker
Apparently, the Parks Canada website is a great resource that provides visitor safety information specific to each park. Well, what about if we're just going somewhere local and not wild or remote? The author says, quote, the size of the forest is less important for preparation than the amount of time you plan on spending outdoors, end quote.
00:05:53
Speaker
If you're planning a multi-day hiking, camping, portaging excursion, Parks Canada recommends an app called The Trip Plan. And in it, you fill out all of your pertinent travel information and you share it with others. What type of information is important to share? Well, like, where are you going? And for how long? Who's with you? Descriptions of your vehicle, boat, and tent, and your license plate numbers. Let people know what activities you'll be doing, like if you'll be out on the water or rock climbing.
00:06:22
Speaker
You can also share your medical history and how much water and food you've got packed so rescuers would know how long they have. It is also recommended that even for a short hike, you should pack the essentials, and any mom with kids on a hike knows just how beneficial it is to have extra water and snacks and band-aids plus socks for damp feet.
00:06:41
Speaker
This article also recommends bringing a flashlight, fire starter, a whistle, pocket knife, first aid kit, sun and insect protectant, compass and foil emergency blanket. And this is even for short hikes in your local forest. I never expected this tip to turn into a two parter, but here we are. Next time we will talk about what to do if you get lost, how to find drinking water and what to do about dangerous animals. And at what point you decide to find a place to sleep.
00:07:11
Speaker
This is such a good tip and so timely because we are venturing back out into the woods and I've always wanted to be like a really avid hiker. But I think probably then part of what holds me up half the time is because I know that I'm probably not as prepared as I should be if I'm going to be venturing out for these longer trips.
00:07:36
Speaker
I'm excited for this part and for next week's park too because I think that being prepared is really important and it shouldn't be taken lightly like you said even if we're going out locally with our kids to just the forest nearby our house.
Friendship Dynamics During COVID-19
00:07:56
Speaker
Cultivating friendships is deep work, heart work, but making friends and maintaining relationships can sometimes be easier said than done, especially in today's world. Right, Lindsay? That's right. I was recently asked about friendship, like how I've managed to keep a best friend for 30 years and what friendship looks like for me at this stage in my life.
00:08:17
Speaker
And it wasn't the first time I've been asked this. I'm asked this quite often. And I thought, you know what, maybe it's time we revisit this topic. So we did an episode on friendship, as you'll remember, Michelle, really early on in this podcast in our first season. And at first, I was a bit hesitant to listen to it because I feel like our early stuff is so cringy. But I'm like, just do it. Just listen to it so you can know what we said about friendship.
00:08:38
Speaker
And it ended up being a great conversation. So I called you right up and I'm like, can you re-release this episode? So that's what you released this week, right? And I hope everybody had the chance to listen to it because we say a lot of things in that episode that we're not going to cover in this one, right? Two totally different types of episodes. But yeah, a lot has changed since our April 2019 episode.
00:09:01
Speaker
Yes. Yes. And I actually, I did enjoy re-listening to that episode. And at one point I did think to myself, you know, wow, we covered a lot of ground. Is there anything left to really touch on? But then, you know, as we were developing this episode, revisiting this topic and just realizing that that episode was five years old.
00:09:26
Speaker
It was five years ago. First of all, how is that even possible? And then secondly, surely that merits reflection on where life has taken us since then, right? And how time has impacted our friendships in this new season.
00:09:42
Speaker
different phases of our lives. Yeah, and new world. Because if you, right, if the people listening think that or feel like the nature of friendship has changed, you aren't wrong. It turns out the COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on friendships on many, many things. But we're just looking at friendships right now. And we are just starting to understand just how much our relationships were impacted.
00:10:07
Speaker
And the truth is our relationships are still undergoing profound changes due to the current political situations, both domestically and around the world. Friendship is changing. And there is a new epidemic being talked about, the epidemic of loneliness. Now, this is not what this episode is about. We could do an entire episode on that. And that is something maybe we should address. But yeah, it is very much a different world over the last five years.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah, I know. It really could be its own episode. It reminded me of something Mother Teresa said about that. And she was pretty prophetic because she talked about this decades ago, right? And she would say things like, the greatest poverty is loneliness.
00:10:49
Speaker
Loneliness is the leprosy of the West, she even called it, right? So it was really insightful even before this pandemic and before life changed so rapidly to be able to see the trajectory of our society.
00:11:04
Speaker
And it's such a spiral effect, bringing it back to today, right? And the way our world is, it causes us to be kind of distant from each other, which makes making friends more challenging, which then circles back to making us feel even more distant from each other.
00:11:23
Speaker
It is definitely something to talk about and to be aware of maybe more so today than it even was in the past, particularly when we are talking about friendships.
Factors Impacting Friendships Today
00:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, you're right that there's a lot of factors at play here. And so it wasn't just the lockdowns, right? That caused great divides among people. I came across an article called the State of American Friendship.
00:11:45
Speaker
Change, Challenges, and Loss, and it's on the website americansurveycenter.org. It is such a great article. We will link it in the show notes because there's so much information, and I actually kept writing that in my notes as I'm working my way through that article. I'm like, oh, there's so much good information. We can just use this one resource. But they talked about how there are many factors at play here which impact our social lives, including the fact that Americans are getting married later, and that impacts your social life.
00:12:13
Speaker
people are more geographically mobile. They move around more. And this is, I think, really a lot more the case in the United States than it is here in Canada. I feel like it's a lot easier to travel between states and move and move your family to different places. It's a little different up here. But yeah, that's that's people are more geographically mobile than they've ever been.
00:12:31
Speaker
parents are spending double the amount of time with their kids than in the previous generation. And that's a good thing, right? But that definitely leaves less time for friendships outside of the home. And Americans are working longer hours and traveling more for work than ever before. You add in the fact that a lot of people are still working from home, and it makes sense that the landscape of human interaction has drastically changed in just a few years since that episode we did on friendship.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yeah. Well, wow. Even more than what we initially thought. But all of that makes sense. And it does help to paint a really big picture because I think when it comes to something like friendships, it can seem disconnected from every other part of life, right? You just think like, why is it so difficult to meet new people?
00:13:20
Speaker
And to get out there and we forget all of these other things that have drastically changed and increased our, either our geographic proximity, like where we're looking for friends, as you said, or even like how we're spending our time differently these days. I think that was so interesting when you were talking about how parents are spending double the amount of time with their kids. And that's so true. I see it even in our family too, and that impacts
00:13:50
Speaker
both of us, like not only as adults, but also our kids. And yeah, just the time budget is being allocated in different places than it has in generations past. And so definitely helpful to consider those things when we take a look at friendship in general.
00:14:12
Speaker
And you just alluded to something that we were talking about before we started recording that is a whole other topic that we haven't even begun to wrap our heads around, which is the future of friendship for our kids, because like what you just pointed out, that not only are we spending more time with our kids, therefore, our kids are spending more time with us, meaning that they are also maybe not as social as kids were in the past. And so there's an entire like it's this constantly shifting and morphing landscape of friendship right now, not just for us, but for the next generations. And it's very interesting to stand back
00:14:40
Speaker
and look at this as a big picture. And then there's another great piece of information in this article, and that's one of the glaring facts that they found in their study is that young women have been the most impacted by this changing face of friendship. I think the numbers were between the ages of 18 and 29. So nearly 6 in 10, which is 59%, have reported losing touch with friends since the pandemic.
00:15:05
Speaker
That's a large percentage of people who have lost touch with friends. Another statistic that jumped out at me is that 22% of Americans reported not having made a new friend in the last five years.
00:15:19
Speaker
Wow. Yeah, wow. Yeah. So I could just keep sharing facts and then we would just be like, whoa, because that whole article is so good. But we've got to get focused here. And so we're going to expand upon a bit of the data we were just looking at there and kind of take this big picture and try to break it all apart and try to understand this ever shifting nature and landscape of friendship.
00:15:44
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds good. Those facts blow my mind a little bit. Yeah. And it's interesting to think about what the ages of those 18 to 29 year olds would have been at the start of the pandemic. Yeah. Well, the survey was done in 2022, so it was not quite right now. But yeah, you're right. Just adjusting it for that little bit. And the next affected age group was the next group. So it was like 32.
00:16:12
Speaker
I forget, 41 or somewhere in there are 39. That was the next affected group, right? Who lost friends. But yeah, that idea of not making a new friend. So I think that's actually a bit, not encouraging, but you can definitely feel like you're not alone. It seems like you're really not alone if that's the case that you're having trouble meeting new people and really having friendships that you feel are thriving and sustainable.
00:16:38
Speaker
and that are kind of filling your needs and that you're able to be a good friend for someone else. The numbers show it that this is a huge struggle across at least Canada and the United States right now.
00:16:47
Speaker
Okay, so I think it's important that we revisit again our 2019 episode and maybe have a look at what 2019 Michelle felt about friendship and we'll look at what 2019 Lindsay thought about friendship back then and we can laugh at us from five years ago and look at what's changed and what hasn't changed.
Evolving Views on Friendship
00:17:08
Speaker
So Michelle, tell me about you over the last five years.
00:17:12
Speaker
Oh my goodness, how have I changed? Where does one even begin? I just have to say also, listening to that episode, I had such affection for 2019, Michelle and Lindsay. I'm like,
00:17:28
Speaker
You guys had no idea. But okay, I feel like after going through what we all collectively have gone through in the past five years, let alone individually, there is like so much to unpack. But I definitely have had some new insights about friendship in general, and it's impacted how I approach them. So in our episode from 2019,
00:17:53
Speaker
I mentioned how I was more in a stage of cultivating community and friendships. I was in that state. I spoke about being willing to show up to like events to become a familiar face even in group settings. I was looking for camaraderie basically in the wild adventure that was parenting young children at the time.
00:18:17
Speaker
And how old were your kids back then? I actually am just trying to, I'm going to do it for myself too because I forgot to place that. Yeah. So I think that my oldest would have been about eight years old. It would have been eight. The twins would have been six and the youngest would have been about three or four. Okay. Yep.
00:18:38
Speaker
I think my ideas of friendship, honestly, in principle have stayed largely the same. But where I think I have grown and matured is that in the last five years, it was tested. So my ideas about friendship were tested. So for example, one way that it was tested, referring to our 2019 episode, was when we talked about being open to friends who may not always be on the same page as you.
00:19:04
Speaker
Yeah. But who you do love and enjoy and that we can and sometimes or often even should have different personalities and people in our lives. And I felt like that was tested for a lot of people during the pandemic. But I know for sure I thought we all thought we were okay with that. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm totally fine with differing opinions and then a pandemic hits. I know. That's what I was thinking. I'm like, well, I certainly felt the temptation.
00:19:34
Speaker
to close myself in or to align myself to search for a group of people who I agreed with unequivocally, right? Because it felt like there was safety in that. And we all saw so many people doing the same. It was like the concept of finding your tribe, but amped up to the max. That's what it felt like, right? And so the problem for me was that I didn't,
00:20:00
Speaker
feel like I had extreme views during COVID. I certainly had my own opinions and I agreed and disagreed on various issues as we all did, but I never felt like I was so set in one set of beliefs or opinions that I really fit in with any group exclusively at all when everyone else was really starting to close in on friend groups. And take sides, yeah.
00:20:25
Speaker
Yes, and I confess to feeling a little bit untethered friendship-wise during those years. I am grateful that the friends that I happened to have were not the kind to cut me off if I disagreed. But I did feel like sometimes we weren't able to connect as deeply on certain issues as we were in the past, and I did find that challenging.
00:20:48
Speaker
I was tempted to chameleon myself if I found myself within a group of people with certain strong opinions one way or the other. So I spent those years really testing my claim that I don't really mind differing opinions.
00:21:06
Speaker
I was happy to find it didn't change my love for the person. And that was the lesson, was just not seeking validation and mistaking that for searching for friendship. And it taught me so much about loving others. So I'm grateful for that.
00:21:25
Speaker
can I give you a review about how good you were during that time like you need me weighing in on a little surprise review but you were so good at that and I mean obviously we talked all the time through it we were recording podcasts for it and I took a harder line on a few things than you did but I watched how
00:21:43
Speaker
thoughtful and kind and supportive you were of everyone. You really did a great job of wanting to hear everybody's points of view and then really process them thoughtfully and then still do what was best for your family. But I never felt like you were judging anyone. You really modeled what that looked like. So yay.
00:22:02
Speaker
Five stars for you. Oh, well, wow. Thank you. Thank you for this surprise review. I'm glad. And I have to say, too, I was so grateful for our friendship. I also felt you held that space as well. Kind of. I learned.
00:22:20
Speaker
Well, in recording the podcast, we talked so much through so much of it, right? Yes, we did. But it was a good lesson. It felt like a school in friendship going through the different relationships during that time period. It was, yeah. And that was why, right? So another thing we spoke about in our first episode was not necessarily pigeonholing yourself into a specific kind of friendship because you feel like you can only be friends with
00:22:49
Speaker
where you're finding your identity right now. And I think the example we used was like thinking you can only be friends with other moms of young kids if you are currently a mother with young kids. But right now we find ourselves with older kids who are developing their own interests and hobbies. That's taking us all over the friendship and acquaintance map.
00:23:13
Speaker
So one way that I've grown as well since that other episode was we now have like, we're now friendly with people from hockey and swimming and church. We still have homeschool friends and family friends and childhood friends and longtime friends. Like it's just, it's broadened so much and it's been nice to be able to spend time with all kinds of those different groups of people as well. So all in all, like how,
00:23:43
Speaker
Have I changed since 2019? I feel like not a lot has changed, per se, to be honest. But maybe it's just that the vision has been tested and it's been expanded for me. That what friendship can be is so delightful and exciting when you are able to open your mind in that way.
00:24:08
Speaker
And just where I'm at right now in terms of friendship is becoming more in tune and attentive to my own identity and goals and purposes. And as my confidence in those things grow, the more I'm able to enjoy friendships for what they are, wherever they're at. And as we're both, meaning like both of us in the relationship are at any given phase or season. And I think it's just,
00:24:32
Speaker
It's helped set everything in proper place and proper perspective, which gives a relationship room and space and freedom to grow. I think that sounds beautiful. You've done a good job. That is awesome. Thank you. That's good growth. How about you? Where has this journey of life taken you?
00:24:53
Speaker
in the last few years. Honestly,
Changes in Friendship Priorities
00:24:56
Speaker
I've been trying to think about it. Okay. So we just did the math. And so my kids back in 2019 were 12, 10, seven, and five. So very much a different phase of life than I'm in now. So 2019, Lindsay looked to friendships as an escape. That's what I mentioned in that episode that I really needed to get out of the house sometimes, not all the time. I wasn't desperate for escape, but
00:25:18
Speaker
The friendships I had, I needed to just be a fun time out for a couple of hours and just get outside the house. I was still homeschooling then, so I did want that kind of like adult time. But I do remember even then and even more so now, my friendships have to be low maintenance. And I talked about then, and I believe this even more now,
00:25:38
Speaker
that I just can't carry the emotional luggage of others. And I want to clarify that that doesn't mean I can't be there for friends who need me and hear when they have to say something. I'm just very intentional about how much I take in. So it might mean a smaller group, right? Or less opportunities for people to like really open up. So meaning that I'm really careful about who I'm being vulnerable with, which we'll actually talk about a little bit later.
00:26:04
Speaker
But I'm really honest about this phase in my life that I'm in. I'm going to be 44 this year. I'm in my mid-40s. And so my physical, my mental, my emotional, my spiritual, that capacity is greatly reduced right now. It's concentrated. Let's say that, not reduced.
00:26:25
Speaker
That has continued to happen. It was starting when my kids were pre-teens and that has just continued on. So what matters to me is that I can not talk to somebody for a while and then pick up the phone and we're totally fine. And that's all the friendships I have right now. Everybody in my life, we're all kind of in that stage. And it's funny you were saying that you're in a stage where you have friends from a bunch of different areas.
00:26:46
Speaker
I was like that too for a long time like all different ages and I loved all that I've actually just realized as you were saying that that I've gone that other way again All of my friends are pretty much in the like the people that I really talk with all the time are all in the same stage And I feel like maybe you need that again when you have teenagers I do feel like I'm in such a it's such a weird space to be like perimenopausal and teenagers and
00:27:09
Speaker
and to have been married for 20 years and to have had your husband in his career for 20 years and all these things kind of converge at once and it's a very niche little spot and so you I feel like more than any other period of my motherhood I do need to be with people who are kind of in this spot and so I'm not being exclusionary I'm just being again very deliberate and intentional about where I spend my energy
00:27:31
Speaker
So I love, you and I were talking earlier about how beneficial it is just to have those few people like now that my kids are in school that I can just chat with in the morning for a couple minutes. Like that ticks that acquaintance box and that feels nice and I'm social. But yeah, those other close friends that I keep close, I'm just really intentional about my time and energy. And this is something you hear all the time from women in their 40s. It's a very common theme, but I am on guard as well that I'm not,
00:27:59
Speaker
closing off my heart to friendships. I have to be really aware of that because I do feel like I have a tendency the older I get to just be like this gnarled up old woman with her book and just like nobody. I don't want to see anybody get off my lawn.
00:28:14
Speaker
My dad just retired and him and I have been talking a lot about this and we're very similar Personalities and he is so satisfied in his own daily routine his walk his like documentary He'll watch his book. He'll read like going to the grocery store Like he feels so satisfied in that and then my mom's a complete opposite a total social butterfly and she cannot understand him and he cannot understand her and those two things and I I
00:28:38
Speaker
I'm definitely growing more like my dad. So I keep cheering him on in the background going, it's totally fine if you don't want to do anything else. But I do think we have to be on our guard that we do get so tired, right? That it is important to still put in that effort. And again, we'll talk about this a little bit later, but it is something in the back of my mind always going,
00:28:55
Speaker
Okay, Lindsey, don't get so careful about how you're using your energy. You start to really restrict it or hold it back from people, right? And just being aware of that. And one of the other things that's filling my social bucket, if we want to call it that, is that my older two are fully almost adults, right? My son is going to be 16. My daughter is going to be 18.
00:29:17
Speaker
Um, and I absolutely love my time with them. We chat until the wee hours of the morning. Um, I'm, we're friendly. I'm still definitely not their friend. I'm their mom. So I'll just say that in case anybody thinks I'm not doing that, but we have so many things in common. We genuinely love talking to each other. Um, I really enjoy every minute I'm with them. So I feel like that's really satisfying kind of that social itch and that won't be there forever, right? That's a really small window of time.
00:29:47
Speaker
to have them in this role in my life and have this friendship with them and i also think it's a foundational time of building that friendship with them so that we can continue to have a relationship appropriate friendship as they continue to grow older so i'm really investing a lot of my energy there into my teenagers right now
00:30:05
Speaker
So that being said, I don't feel like I was in 2019 where I need to escape. I feel very, very satisfied in the friendship I have within my marriage and the friendship I have with my children, the few close friends I have around. I really don't feel like I need to even get out for a couple hours.
00:30:22
Speaker
That being said, I went on three girls weekends over the last year for the first time ever, right, since having kids. And that was great. I'm glad the girls dragged me out and stuff. But by day two, I'm like itching to go home, not because it's not fun and everybody's great, but because I'm like, I'm good now. I'm ready. I'm ready to go home. Bucket filled. Yeah. Yeah. So I really don't need time away in that same way. I feel deeply fulfilled.
00:30:47
Speaker
That's so good. That's such a great perspective to keep in mind too, because especially when our kids are younger and we're spending so much time with our young children, to remember that these young children will grow up to be probably pretty awesome big people. And I always think about like if and when we're ever able to travel, one of the most vivid
00:31:12
Speaker
images in my mind I have about our family traveling is when they're kind of at that age you're describing with your older kids and sitting out late at night on some cobblestone street in Europe and sharing a glass of wine with my young adult children.
00:31:29
Speaker
and being friends in that way. So that's also probably a changing dynamic in friendships as we get older, is that we have that in a more immediate way in our own homes even, in a way that just isn't the same when they're very little too, as beautiful as those stages are. So what's interesting is we're revisiting friendship and comparing it to where we were in 2019 to today in 2024.
00:31:57
Speaker
that
Exploring Dunbar's Number Theory
00:31:58
Speaker
a lot of our discussion has to do with still recognizing the different stages of friendship and like where people
00:32:08
Speaker
fall on the acquaintance to close close friends scale right and what's so interesting is that there people have actually done studies on that concept so it's not super abstract and you came across um one of those theories the Dunbar Dunbar theory or Dunbar's number yes Dunbar's number okay
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah, so it was a theory by Robin Dunmar, and he is a British anthropologist, and he and his colleagues examined historical, anthropological, and contemporary data and found that there is a magic number in which groups of people naturally split off or the group will collapse on itself. Like what is a sustainable group size just under ordinary conditions? And that number is 150.
00:32:55
Speaker
the team found that our social circles can be broken down in this way. So it's always in groups of five, and they don't quite know why that is, but they say that our tightest circle, our closest friends, is comprised of five people. And then the next circle is 15 close friends. And then the next circle is 50 friends.
00:33:17
Speaker
And then the next one is 150 meaningful contacts. And then, and this is where I'm like, who honestly has this, but okay, then there's 500 acquaintances. And then the mind blowing 1500 people that we can recognize.
00:33:35
Speaker
So right, so five people in your immediate closest circle, then 15 close friends, 50 friends, 150, 500, 1500. Can you, Michelle, recognize 1500 people? Wow. That, well, I feel like maybe if we, if that includes like the 500 acquaintances and 150 meaningful contacts. I think it does. I think it does.
00:34:00
Speaker
Yeah. And celebrities, because I can pull a celebrity out of anything. I'm like, that person was in a commercial from 1986. Oh my gosh, I can do that too. So maybe yes, maybe the answer is just yes. Yes, we can recognize 1500 people.
00:34:15
Speaker
Isn't that so interesting? And I do want to just say right off the bat that his theory is met with many objections, namely from people who point out that our social circles are really dependent on our wealth and our status. They pointed out that people who have living in help,
00:34:37
Speaker
maids, nannies, chauffeurs, that changes their social circle. They know a bit more people. And this is different than people living in a mountainous region of South America, where they might not ever encounter 1,500 different faces in their lifetime. So we get that. We get that this is not going to cover everybody. So this is mostly a middle-class suburban lifestyle.
00:34:59
Speaker
So Dunbar's number, as it is known, is 150. And he defines this as, quote, the number of stable relationships people are cognitively able to maintain at once, end quote. Dunbar has spent decades crunching the numbers and in his book Friends, understanding the power of our most important friendships.
00:35:19
Speaker
He shares things like the number of hours needed for an acquaintance to become a close friend, and it's 200 hours, in case you were wondering, of investment. But yeah, so 150 is the number he came up with for any type of group before it collapses, it splits off, or before, I guess, as an individual, if that's the amount of people that are in your wide circle that you know, that you interact with, right? That would be about the most that our brains can cognitively handle.
00:35:47
Speaker
Hmm, which is really interesting. I have a couple of questions. I'd love to ask Dunmar. I'm not asking me. But it would be interesting to know that 150, maybe it's not the same 150 people through your whole life. It can be. I wonder if it shifts. Yeah, because I was just thinking like,
00:36:11
Speaker
when I was in college versus where I am now, I might be able to recognize 150 different people that I could hold cognitively as well in my mind. But then the number kind of makes sense though from like an anthropological, is that the right word? Anthropological perspective through human history. Before
00:36:35
Speaker
technology and mobility and the media and everything like that in your village, would you have even known more than 150 people even throughout your whole life? It might have been the same 150. So it would be interesting to think like this may be how humans, how we are wired, but it's our environment that has changed systematically, which is causing us to have some analysis and reflection at this point.
00:37:04
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's a great point. And I will just say one thing about village life. I was seeing a discussion today on Facebook about how somebody, it's their pet peeve when they know people who want to live for six weeks in another country so that they can say that they lived there. And I'm like, but I want to do that one day. But that really ticked this person off. So it started this discussion of how long do you have to live somewhere before you can tell people later, you lived in Italy or you lived in England.
00:37:29
Speaker
And so all the comments were different. Somebody said, you have to wait till you get a utilities bill or until you pay taxes there. But one person said, well, if you're in a small English village, it's until the village accepts you, which can take 25 years. And so you do think about this 150, these small village groups. And I think that that's a really important point to make, that that is what we kind of are ancestors and throughout most of history until the Industrial Revolution, right? It would have been 1500.
00:37:56
Speaker
or like 150 to 1500 right in that sweet spot probably of your, the faces you would have ever seen in your life. And so yeah, I think our brains maybe did develop to really only take that in. And when it becomes too much for that, that's when we're like, this is too much, like too much stimulation, too many people, I can't keep up.
00:38:13
Speaker
In social media, think about when you have thousands of followers or thousands of people you're interacting with. Wow. Yeah. We have so many more faces to hold in our brains than probably ever before in human history. And it's such an interesting point to think about what that does for us and how it muddies the smaller numbers too, I think, as well, like how that impacts the 15 close friends. Yeah.
00:38:42
Speaker
Are those 15 in-person friends? Are one or two of those people long distance friends? Or just people that you may have connected with online? So many questions. I need Dunbar to do follow-up studies and research analysis.
00:39:00
Speaker
And now I've got a further one. I don't even know. Okay. Anyways, these studies were done in the 80s and 90s and stuff. Oh, okay. I think he was, but now you've just brought me to this thing that I saw this week that really jarred me. That was on Catholic holism on Instagram, where they just said like, AI is taking over social media, right? So you could be building a friend on Instagram that is a complete AI account that you don't even know is AI in the next couple of years.
00:39:27
Speaker
And you will be having private messages with them. But just to think about the fact that you could be talking to an actual bot in the future, which we already know interact on Twitter and on larger. But we're talking about like private messages, like longer form communications. And so people could be building this relationships with completely AI, not real people in the next year and not know. And I've watched my kids experiment with this on Snapchat.
00:39:52
Speaker
when they were debuting their messaging bot, who could respond almost without error in a normal conversation to everything they were writing them. And so you're right, if one of those 15 people or heaven forbid, one of those five people in your life is a relationship you've built with someone online that you don't actually know, this is a whole new territory.
00:40:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. I'm like, don't take one of my 15 spots. Those precious spots. Okay. And then the other number though that I was finding really interesting was those 200 hours of investment that it takes to become a close friend.
00:40:31
Speaker
And I was thinking maybe that's also a reason why as we get older it may seem more difficult to make new close friends, right? Because if you're looking for new deep connections and relationships with people but life just keeps getting busier and also for the people around us it gets busier then
00:40:51
Speaker
You know, all it is is maybe it requires creativity because that landscape has also changed in how we approach putting in those 200 hours. Like, whereas before you would kind of naturally put in 200 hours with someone if you were in school with them.
00:41:07
Speaker
When you work with people, your colleagues often can become close friends because of that time. But if you've shifted out of those societal communities, like as an example, like for us, when we chose to stay home,
00:41:23
Speaker
and raise our kids or if you're homeschooling or even if you move right and it's difficult to find those opportunities to connect for so many hours, then maybe a shift in terms of like looking for friends in within causes that you're passionate about.
00:41:40
Speaker
So you can join organizations and work together towards this cause. Or you accumulate hours and familiarity by organizing events or projects with a team, or you join a sports team. So just thinking about the 200 hours that Danbar mentions in his study, it may not be enough FaceTime anymore to meet at social events, depending on different stages of life.
00:42:06
Speaker
And it might take more strategy, but I think it's hopeful that we can be aware of it and encouraging in the sense that if we can think along those lines, it opens up so much more opportunities and possibilities, not only for new friendships, but also in a way for your own fulfillment and enjoyment of life. Absolutely.
00:42:25
Speaker
And then we were talking also about just that number five. And one of the things that was in my head is that, well, I'm like, well, my husband and four kids, is that my five? You also have a husband and four kids. Like, is that, is that my five? And then I thought, well, again, that might be for different, different stages of life, but it can't be always that group of five. But this number five was so interesting. And then when I was Googling it to look into like five friends, I came across that saying that's often attributed to motivational speaker, Jim Rohn.
00:42:55
Speaker
And the quote is, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And I'm like, well, that's certainly true with the people I share DNA with. But I hope I've evolved a bit past my nine-year-old's view of some things. But you're the average, though. Right, right, right.
00:43:13
Speaker
So I thought, okay, so this is again where it's like, okay, that must mean like the people that you're choosing, right? Like you have to step back and go, okay, what five people am I choosing to bring into my life? And then I came across a really cool article on personalexcellence.co and it asks five questions about those five people. So if we're not using our husbands and four kids, but our husbands might be part of that five and they probably should be part of your five.
00:43:39
Speaker
But if you are looking for five people to really be in that closest circle, he shares five questions that we can ask ourselves about these people. So the first one is, what kind of person do you want to be? I think that that's a really important thing we need to ask ourselves first.
00:43:58
Speaker
And then number two, who are the five people you spend the most time with currently? And then you can ask yourself what top three qualities do each of them represent? So again, is this our husband and our kids? And they're definitely, that's a part of it, but I think we're trying to separate that out.
00:44:16
Speaker
Yeah, like what are the top three things those people are exhibiting, qualities they're exhibiting? And then you have to then ask yourself, do those qualities match who you want to be in the future? Like, do you want to take on those qualities from each person?
00:44:31
Speaker
And then number four, who are the top five people who embody the qualities that you desire, that you might know in the periphery of your life? Like they might not be those five people closest to you in your life. Do you know five people? Do you really admire your boss? Do you really admire this woman you see at church who just really seems to have it together? Really think about like, okay, who are the top people that you know that embody those qualities that you desire?
00:44:54
Speaker
then if they are different than the people in your group just think how can I increase my contact with those other people right to expand upon your group so you can bring in because I do think that it is true whether we like it or not I do think it makes a lot of sense that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with
00:45:12
Speaker
What's so interesting to me about that average of five people concept is I wonder if it goes both ways or if it's like what comes first, the chicken or the egg kind of scenario.
Are You the Average of Your Five Closest Friends?
00:45:27
Speaker
are we intentional about choosing those five people and so then we cultivate their good qualities just by being around them birds of a feather flock together or is it like what for five people do we happen to find ourselves spending the most time with and then taking a look at what
00:45:45
Speaker
how that is impacting us and our life and our goals. And for good or for bad, right? That's right. Yeah. And then is there space to kind of consider them both as two separate groups of five people? Right, right. And I think that's so interesting. And when you were talking about like, do our kids
00:46:07
Speaker
I was thinking like, well, I do actually now know a lot about Pokemon. So maybe they are influencing me.
00:46:16
Speaker
Maybe my sons are part of those five people, but when we're talking, yes. They definitely become, I think, into that world. Like, I think I'm there where they are part of my five people right now. But I think that if I pin all my hopes on something that is fleeting, like our children, right? They are going to leave the home and maybe move far away. Yeah. I think this being, I think what I'm learning from this is this openness to being aware of the five people that you have closest to you all the time.
00:46:44
Speaker
and really understanding, you know, when you've interacted with somebody how their mood or how they've changed your mood, right? They maybe had an impact on how you're viewing things just even the rest of that day after you've been with them. So just being really aware at the five people that you keep closest to you at whatever season of life you're in.
00:47:01
Speaker
And I think that's really good to remember as we grow and mature and to remember how social we were created. That this was probably by design that we influence and are influenced so much by people.
00:47:21
Speaker
very natural for us to want to and to be able to take into account who those people are and whether or not things need to shift at various stages of our life depending on where we need to be, where we want to be, and ultimately where God wants us to be too, to take all those things into consideration in an intentional way.
00:47:43
Speaker
when we're
How to Be a Good Friend
00:47:44
Speaker
looking at the people that we spend a lot of time with as friends. Okay, so I know you're listening to all this right you guys and you're like but I just I just want to connect with my longtime friend who I haven't texted in a long time or come on ladies like I just want to make friends with the moms at the park. So this last part of this podcast we're going to talk about how I can be a good friend. How can you be a good friend?
00:48:06
Speaker
Because I think the truth is that nine times out of 10, if we learn to be a good friend, good friends come to us, right? I think that we can so often focus our attention and our energy on how, how not good of a friend everybody else is being. And obviously there are going to be times where we're hurt, but I really believe, and I know you agree, Michelle, that the effort of putting, like putting the effort into yourself and making yourself be a better friend is where we should be putting our energy.
00:48:32
Speaker
Yeah, that can be really hard to take a look at ourselves and recognize the good points and the not so great points, right? That's part and parcel when we talk about humility, right? Is being really honest about seeing ourselves as we
00:48:50
Speaker
as we actually are. And there is, like, there can be something on our part that we recognize we need to work on in order to be a good friend. Another perspective on this would be an honest realization, too, like going along in that same vein, that we're not necessarily suited for deep friendship with everyone we think we should be, right? And we talked about the possibility, Lindsay, that even your personality type
00:49:20
Speaker
Yes. For your temperament, for example, might influence what kind of a friend you are and whether that necessarily jives with someone else's type and temperament, right? And I think that that's a normal but important consideration if you're feeling like a relationship isn't clicking the way that you have thought it might.
00:49:41
Speaker
And also too, like to go along with all of these like hard honest looks at ourselves. It could also be a case of right person wrong time. Yeah. Right. And sometimes we need to take a step back and give someone the benefit of the doubt. Like if I worry they're not interested in me as a friend, to recognize that they could also just be really busy with life.
00:50:05
Speaker
for family. They might have a lot on their plate right now and actually being a good friend to them would be to be supportive but not ask for more than what they can give. Yes. Yeah there's just sometimes much more at play when it comes to relationships than we're able to see just on the surface and much more often than I think we realize a big part of being a good friend or even just a solid friendly person
00:50:32
Speaker
is giving a lot of grace to others and to ourselves and being at peace with how things truly are after thinking about the relationship as honestly as we can. Yes. And I love that you brought up what we had talked about earlier. So like we wanted this episode, our original plan for this episode was to be friendships and the temperament types. Because we thought, oh, this is brilliant. Like there's got to be like this.
00:50:55
Speaker
Somebody has to have done this before us, where they've aligned like different friendship personalities with the different temperaments. And it turns out from my very basic research, no one had really delved into that. So maybe we are onto something, but we just did not have the capacity to create a whole episode about that right now. That's for the next five years. Absolutely. But I think that that's a really important point. The point stands that different personality types are going to be different types of friends, period. And in that person's
00:51:23
Speaker
might not be who you need them to be at that time. Like you're saying, they, they might not ever be who you need them to be. You might just clash, which is totally fine too. And I think at different seasons in your life, and I forget if we talked about this in 2019, and I feel like we did, but if you're the mom on the couch with your phone on your hand and all your toddlers around you, I've been there, you've been there Michelle, and someone isn't texting you back and your whole world is that 300 square foot living room.
00:51:48
Speaker
It hurts, right? You're like, I have no one else to talk to right now. And that doesn't last forever. You will come out of that. Just like you're saying, having really giving grace and really thinking, okay, what season is this other person in? This is the hardest years as a woman. And I really want to address this because you are the women who are reaching out to me and asking about this.
00:52:11
Speaker
You are in the trenches, and like I said, I remember being on the couch and like that. Or you're super busy with teenagers or sports and all the activities you're doing. But having that kind of lighthearted approach to going, I'll talk to them when I talk to them, and we'll have a good time when we do, right? Like kind of just accepting them for what it is for this season of life, I think is really, really important. And I also love that you said being friendly. We forget that that's a different thing than having a friendship.
00:52:41
Speaker
It's important to just be friendly and to just be smiley and happy when you run into somebody and be friendly and not expect that all of those friendly encounters are necessarily going to translate into friendships.
00:52:55
Speaker
And just another thing I want to address too that I think it's important to remind ourselves that being a good friend, like if you do all these things that we're going to suggest, it isn't a guarantee that you're not going to be hurt in the future, right? Like you could be the best friend to someone and they just can't receive that right now. That's going to happen and friendships are going to come and go. And so just very, very briefly, some of the signs that maybe this friendship isn't meant to be right now,
00:53:22
Speaker
Is that you feel drained every time you talk with this person you get off the phone or you get out Leave a visit and you're like, oh you feel like you've given all of your energy or that the friendship is one-sided and they really don't listen to what you're saying and they don't respect your time or your boundaries, right if they stay far too long and your kids are running around and need naps or
00:53:44
Speaker
or they're pushing you to go out and they know you're exhausted past 7.30 at night and they're like, no, you need to go out. They're not under like giving you that respect. Or they don't respect your feelings or perhaps you have a codependent relationship where you're overly or disorderly attached to one another. I think that it's time that we have an honest conversation with ourselves about what healthy friendships look like.
00:54:09
Speaker
And I think that in a world where we've lost so many friends, as the numbers have shown, we're so scared to lose more, right? We're like, well, sometimes it's fun. We can go out and have that glass of wine and it's a good time. But going forward into the future with healthy friendships, I think in the long run, right, is so much better for us.
00:54:28
Speaker
Yeah, it really comes back to the point we made in that initial friendship episode from 2019. And we've talked about this many times since then too, about the definition of love being willing the good of the other person, right? And friendship is a form of love. It's like, I don't know, all of these episodes are now blending together. We did the types of love too, right? It's one of those.
00:54:57
Speaker
I totally forget. I don't know. You know what I mean. Agape? Platonic? No, agape is like god's love. Well, it's not arrows. I have the exact same thought. I'm like, well, it's not arrows, so. Anyone can go back and just listen to what other types of love. Or Google it. Right. And it will come up for sure. But the one that is about friends is the one we're talking about.
00:55:23
Speaker
And friendship being a kind of love requires that kind of reciprocal consideration on both parties, right? So what you're saying is totally true because if any of those things are present, it's just going to require a re-evaluation.
00:55:40
Speaker
of where the other person's willing the good for the other person lies, right? And again, it might be external factors playing a role in that, or it may just mean things are changing and shifting in your relationship with each other.
00:55:58
Speaker
But if we keep love at our core, then that's a pretty good measure of friendship and how good of a friend we're trying to be and also how we are receiving friendship from other people. Yes, you make a good point because love isn't always warm, fuzzy feelings, right? That's the thing when you look into the philosophical aspects of love or the sacrificial aspects of Christian love. It isn't always that they make you feel good.
00:56:25
Speaker
If you truly are willing the good of that person it might not make you feel good It might be letting them go and just praying for them and so that we have this misunderstanding of what love is supposed to feel like and we take that into all of our relationships and and friendship is so has been so
00:56:44
Speaker
impacted by this, especially when you look at the show Friends and Sex in the City. These are the shows that I was a teenager during. They deeply impacted what I thought female friendship is supposed to look like. And when you don't have those girlfriends that you're going out for brunch with every Sunday morning in Manhattan, you think, well, I just don't have it. Like I'm never going to have that. And but that really did impact not only our views on marriage and men and relationships, it also impacted our views on female friendships.
00:57:09
Speaker
Um, so it might not always feel good. Um, but like, like you said, St. Thomas Aquinas said, it is willing the good of the other. That's a very different thing. So if let's say, okay, we're ready. We want to be good friends. We've got six tips here that we got from the website, mindbodygreen.com.
Prioritizing Time for Friendships
00:57:28
Speaker
And we're just going to go through these six tips and hopefully we can all be better friends at the end.
00:57:33
Speaker
Yeah, perfect. So the first thing on this list was to prioritize making time for each other as friends, right? This is something that I mentioned actually in the last episode, where I referred to how, again, sometimes just showing up to many events or group activities with a particular group,
00:57:54
Speaker
as much as you can can help because people get to know you naturally. And with those relationships that you could see growing deeper through those levels of the friendship theory we just talked about, it will help so much to prioritize seeing one another because it gives you those hours of companionship that you need and it fosters familiarity and comfort that will just make it easier to be able to open up to each other.
00:58:21
Speaker
And to love one another as you get to know each other so it's an important factor to keep in mind as you're forming new friendships is how can I make time for this other person. And then the second one is open up and allow each other to be vulnerable.
00:58:38
Speaker
So I have learned so much about this over the last few years. This is the journey I have been on. Mother Natalia, who is often on Pints With Aquinas, and she's just been given her own little regular 10 minute show. And it is my favorite thing in the whole world. And I've listened, she has about six episodes so far. And I've listened to each one about three times because I love them so much. She does an episode on gentleness. You and I have also done a full episode on gentleness because
00:59:02
Speaker
It's something I'm so not good at. And it turns out neither is mother Natalia who comes off as the most like soft-spoken gentle nun, right? And she shared the story about being vulnerable and she shared about this newish friendship she has and she was out and it was a guy and they were out hanging out together.
00:59:20
Speaker
And in her family, you poke fun at the other person to show love. That's how I was raised to. And she's not a gentle person by her temperament, by her nature. And so she's cutting and she's sarcastic and she's funny and she's trying to work on these things. But she was doing that throughout the day. And
00:59:37
Speaker
it didn't feel right. And she was talking about how she went back to the convent and the monastery. She was talking about how she just couldn't stop thinking that she had hurt him. And then she said, well, we're forming these new friendships. And unless you even know somebody very, very well, the truth is you don't know where someone's wounds are. You don't know where their tender spots are. And so it's really important
01:00:01
Speaker
that we gently allow ourselves to slowly be vulnerable as trust grows and make space for the other person to do that. But
Paying Attention to Friendship Details
01:00:11
Speaker
I'm going to keep that in my mind forever, this idea that we don't know other people's wounds and their tender spots and to always keep that in mind.
01:00:20
Speaker
So the third thing on the list is to pay attention to the little things. And at first I thought when I was reading this one that it meant remember all the little things. And I was like, sometimes that can be hard, especially when life is so busy.
01:00:38
Speaker
Then I was reading this article called how to make people feel special from the blog, that old kitchen table. And I realized that it's paying attention to the little things that make people feel noticed and loved. It's what we do, not necessarily what we remember, although
01:00:56
Speaker
that would make people feel heard, so that's good too. And some points from that blog that I thought were noteworthy were her story about a barista who made her coffee extra hot one day when she came in with her baby because she said to her, you know, like, I remember my coffee always getting cold. Well, I had to take care of my young children.
01:01:16
Speaker
And she wanted this woman to have a bit longer with her hot drink. And some other examples of paying attention to little things were things like mailing a handwritten note or asking your friend if they need anything picked up, if you're going to the store and you're passing by. When you offer a compliment, make it specific. And I love this one. One of them was ask to take a picture together.
01:01:42
Speaker
And I was like, yes. And now our friend Grace is really good at this. I swear she's the only friend I actually have pictures with, except for the one you and I took five years ago before we started recording the podcast. And Grace remembers all the time to take pictures with friends. It makes me feel special. It really does when she wants a picture of us when we're together. And so I thought, what a great perspective. It might not be the original
01:02:11
Speaker
meaning of the pay attention to the little things, but I thought, what a nice mindset to go into a friendship where you listen and pay attention enough to take notice of the other person and then, you know, as opportunities present themselves to honor those things you've noticed, to take advantage of them and show your love in that way.
01:02:34
Speaker
And Grace is our same friend who gave all of us gifts for coming to her birthday dinner. I know. I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah. And that was totally, totally her that we got loop bags. Yep. We got loop bags. And it was amazing. She is a good friend. She is.
01:02:52
Speaker
Okay, and number four, so be willing to challenge each other. So we know the saying, iron sharpens iron. I was listening again to Pints with Aquinas. Forgive me because my Lenten thing is only Catholic media, so I've been listening to four to five, six hours a day of Pints with Aquinas. And I was listening to Christopher West. He is known in the Catholic world for being an expert on the theology of the body.
01:03:18
Speaker
And it's a fantastic three and a half hour, very emotional deep dive into our shame and brokenness and our bodies and our souls. So if anyone else is interested in that. But he talked about how we know we're in a good place, like emotionally, I guess, like in a humble place. If people's praise doesn't inflate us, and if their correction or criticism doesn't break us, the extremes on either end.
01:03:45
Speaker
We should have a proper and healthy view of ourselves. And we've talked about this in our humility episodes, which is the view of ourselves from God. But we can't be too inflated. Like if you're feeling too good when somebody's praising you, or you're too crushed if they have a criticism, you're not in a good place, in that balanced middle place. And I thought that's so interesting that it's even like being praised and feeling too inflated, right? Because you're just too susceptible, susceptible
01:04:11
Speaker
to what other people think about you. But that's different than being willing to challenge each other in friendship when it's coming from that willing the good of the other. That this is where it's like, I care about you and I see you and I'm here to help you with this. Or you might notice your friend's marriage struggling and you might say, hey, we're going to take your kids for a couple hours or whatever.
01:04:33
Speaker
But you're challenging them to make something better, but you're doing it in a friendly way in a different way. Challenge them. But when you do it well, when you do it from a pure heart that is focused on friendship, it doesn't inflate them too high or drop them too low. And the next one on the list is to be open-minded. So we have talked about this one over the years in certain episodes too, right? And I think we did an episode on discourse.
01:04:58
Speaker
um on the art of conversation for sure and certainly in terms of friendship we've talked about this just not to let difference discourage us from getting to know other people in a familiar or even in a close way and I think being open-minded can also extend to giving our friends and acquaintances the benefit of the doubt when we wonder if they're being a bit distant or something like that
01:05:22
Speaker
Being open-minded and considering what they may be going through or what may be going on with them and how, as a friend, we can support them in that. So you have the two different sides of what it means to be open-minded is to, you know, be willing to hear opinions and ideas that are different than yours that may be challenging to yours.
01:05:43
Speaker
but also in a more passive, receptive sense to just be open-minded that there is a lot going on all the time in life and to, I think you were mentioning too about when we find ourselves in those seasons of life when our friendships may be a big part of everything going on in our lives, not to get too panicky if someone doesn't message us back right away for an example.
01:06:12
Speaker
to just be very open to whatever the friendship brings to us at that time.
Caring for Friends with Simple Gestures
01:06:19
Speaker
Okay, and then the last one is look out for them. And I feel like this is a little bit like pay attention to the little things. But this is where I had in my notes before we even talked about it, willing the good of the other.
01:06:30
Speaker
Um, and so that's what I was thinking, but then they recommend in the article, like shut down gossip. If somebody's talking about your friend, shut it down. I'm not always good at that. Um, I have, I've been working for years at overcoming gossip within myself. Um, but that's a great reminder. Um, make sure your friend got home safely. I do this a lot with people. I forgot to do it last night with you, Michelle, but usually cause I'm such a mom, I'm like, please text me and you get home. I don't care if it's at like 2am. I just need to know you got home safely.
01:06:57
Speaker
a little thoughtful gift. But this one, I thought the best way that our group of friends looks out for each other is we pray for each other. And when I was a newer Catholic, when this was all new for me, I found, maybe it was just me, but I'd be like, oh, I'll pray for you. But then I would totally forget. Like I wouldn't actually pray for them.
01:07:18
Speaker
So I've made an effort to actually pray for people when I say I'm going to pray for them. It's crazy. It's like integrity or something. So I do it immediately, just so I don't forget, or I make a note of it so that I do it later.
01:07:35
Speaker
Wow, that's actually transformative when you say you're going to pray for someone and you actually pray for them. It transforms you in that moment, right? It takes you out of whatever you're worried about or focusing on about yourself, me, me, me, as you stop and pray for someone else. But nothing moves me more than when I'm going through something and I get a message from you saying we're going to offer a family rosary for you tonight.
01:07:56
Speaker
or I'm going to pray for you at mass, like when I couldn't go to mass because I was recovering from different things, or I'm going before our Lord at adoration tonight, I'll pray for you and your family. That to me, this looking out for them, there's so little we can actually do to help people often, right? You can bring a meal, you can drop by a snack, those are all good things. But on this universal and eternal and heavenly level,
01:08:19
Speaker
praying for those people we care about, and those people who haven't texted us back, those friends we haven't seen since elementary school, that can have the greatest impact. And in an invisible way, we can't see it, but it could actually be the exact thing that they're waiting for. And sometimes, I remember hearing, sometimes you're the only person praying for that person. Think about that, right? So that I think is the most important thing we can do when we're looking out for our friends.
01:08:58
Speaker
Okay, it's time for our what we're loving this week segment of the show.
Current Favorites: YouTube and Netflix
01:09:03
Speaker
So Lindsay, what have you been loving this week? I have to mention something first because it's I did finish a novel that I really enjoyed and I do think it's worth mentioning but it is not technically what I'm loving so
01:09:14
Speaker
I just thought I needed to mention this. I read a book called Scoop by Eve Lynn Waugh, who is the author of Brideshead Revisited. Perhaps you're familiar. I think this is something you might really enjoy. It's a satire about field reporters during the heyday of newspaper journalism.
01:09:31
Speaker
Interesting. It's all about this mistaken identity right from the beginning of the wrong person sent to report on this war, this not real war. And it was really good. I enjoyed it. I didn't love it. There's something else I'm loving.
01:09:50
Speaker
Okay. Yes, I can recommend Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. Okay. Okay. So what am I really loving? Well, there's a YouTube channel and you might've come across it, Michelle, in your homeschooling and you've maybe watched an episode or two, but I have been binge watching it and I can't get enough. The YouTube channel is called Great Art Explained.
01:10:08
Speaker
Oh, yes. Is it like short? Yes. That's one of the things. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Say more. Yes. Okay. So it's created by James Payne and it has three different types of videos on the channel. He has great art explained in 15 minutes, which is the short one. Great art explained full length, which is around 50 minutes. And then great art cities explained.
01:10:30
Speaker
Now I've only had time to watch his 15 minute episodes just when I had my coffee in the morning and I watched all of them and wow, wow, wow. The detail and work he puts into these episodes is extraordinary. So he picks one piece of art, right? Something usually we're pretty familiar with.
01:10:45
Speaker
And he does a really deep dive into the artist's life and other works and what the world was like to contextualize it. And he discusses the featured piece of art. And it's so hard to believe he packs all that into 15 minutes, especially considering you and I have tried to do this with the Friday finishing school.
01:11:03
Speaker
And I think I'm terrible at packing into 15 minutes. His editing is so well done. The music is so good. And I really enjoyed his videos, but then there was one that really won me over. And I was like, wait, about to watch the Andy Warhol one.
01:11:18
Speaker
And I thought, is he going to properly handle and address Warhol's Catholicism, which is not something usually talked about in a secular art world? And I was like, he's probably not going to mention it. And it's a really big part of who Warhol was. And so sure enough, he did a wonderful job talking about his Catholicism. And it was much better than what I expected to find on a secular YouTube channel. And I thought, well, you won me over now if you handled that well.
01:11:45
Speaker
A word of warning though, in the deep dives he does, he of course touches on the personal lives of the artists and all of these great pieces of art. And a lot of them are influenced by their marital life, their extracurricular sexual lives, like a lot of that is going on in a lot of artists lives. And so sometimes that comes into the conversation.
01:12:05
Speaker
And he also will show a lot of the paintings and images that have some nudity, right? So if that's not something you've addressed with your kids yet, or just be aware that that pops up. I wouldn't say it's crass or vulgar. It's just all of a sudden, oop, there's a breast. So, surprise, morning coffee. But that, when I was just reflecting on that, it reminded me of one last recommendation. So you're almost getting a three for one with this.
01:12:34
Speaker
There was a great documentary I watched a couple of years ago about the topic of nudity and art. And it really surprised me because I thought it was going to be pushing kind of an agenda, like a modernist like just this is what it is, take it forward. But it was a really great deep dive on and to like our is it a voyeurism for men throughout history to be able to look at women right from the beginning of time, like a really great conversation.
01:12:58
Speaker
So I recommend, and there's actually a couple documentaries on nudes and art, but this is the only one I've seen. It's Mary Beard. She's one of my favorite. She is my favorite classical historian. And it's BBC's The Shock of the Nude. And so if you are deep diving into this, maybe with your teenagers for homeschooling and stuff, it's a really interesting topic of discussion. So great art explained YouTube channel. It's fantastic.
01:13:25
Speaker
Okay, I think the video I watched from him that came up in just one of those recommended lists that it has on the feed was the one on the piece of art called The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
01:13:41
Speaker
Oh, yes, yes, yes. The Great Wave. That's the only one I haven't watched yet. Well, I remember liking it. I don't remember much about it, but I remember really enjoying it. And like you said, very delighted by what I learned in 15 minutes. And actually, so you know that little mini cross stitch I did for you of Memento Mori for your birthday? The next mini cross stitch that I'm doing is The Great Wave because ever since watching that video, it's become
01:14:11
Speaker
almost inexplicably for right now, but one of my favorite pieces of art. So I also recommend that channel. Awesome. So Michelle, what have you been loving this week? Okay, so I am currently loving the new live action remake of the TV show Avatar, which is currently showing on Netflix.
01:14:31
Speaker
So our family watched the whole animated series together a couple of summers ago. And to clarify, this is Avatar the Last Airbender, not James Cameron's Avatar. So two very different stories.
01:14:47
Speaker
So yeah, we watched the whole animated series a couple of summers ago in lieu of our typical movie on Friday nights. And we all absolutely loved it. Like Phil and I did too. It's a fantastic show. Really great storytelling. You get really invested in the characters and the plot. And that's just the cartoon version. So when they first announced that Netflix was going to produce a live action remake series,
01:15:14
Speaker
I do think the fans of the animated series were a bit worried because they had tried to make a movie a few years ago. I never saw it, but from what I've heard, fans were not happy with it. So collectively I think everyone was holding their breaths.
01:15:30
Speaker
But it turns out that this live action remake that was just released is really good. And Phil and I have been enjoying it so much. We tried to watch it with our kids, but some of our younger kids found it a bit much and just still preferred the animated version. So it's just Phil and I. We've been continuing on our own.
01:15:53
Speaker
And what I like most about this new remake, and if you've seen the animated series, you'll appreciate this too. It's very well cast, so you're able to see really clearly how the actors were able to get close to their cartoon counterparts, especially in terms of mannerisms and facial expressions. I've never seen that in a remake from a cartoon before.
01:16:19
Speaker
and the characters are kids and they're acted by legit kids and it just works really well so I do think you would enjoy this remake much better if you have seen the animated series first but if you're open to just watching it and enjoying it for what it is I mean the production is well done the stories are engaging
01:16:42
Speaker
There's no swearing. There's no questionable scenes in it. So depending on your kid's comfort level with maybe a bit of violence, like the story revolves around an invading army that goes throughout the world trying to conquer. Then it could also make a great family show. Just use your own discretion. So yes, thumbs up from Phil and I for the new Avatar series remake on Netflix.
01:17:09
Speaker
and we can wholeheartedly recommend that you check it out.
01:17:16
Speaker
Okay, that's going to do it for us this week. If you want to get in touch and chat with us about our topic today, you can find us on our website, www.themodernlady1950.wordpress.com, or leave us a comment on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at The Modern Lady Podcast. I'm Michelle Sacks, and you can find me on Instagram at mmsacks. And I'm Lindsay Murray, and you can find me on Instagram at Lindsay Homemaker.
01:17:44
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. Have a great week and we will see you next time.